


The Great British Bake Off: Season 100

by sans_carte



Category: The 100 (TV), The Great British Bake Off RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Baking, F/F, Fluff, Gratuitous use of puns, May induce hunger while reading--snacks advised, No Strings Attached, Strong Language, basically everyone's in it - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 09:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17936915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_carte/pseuds/sans_carte
Summary: “Nervous, Griffin?” Lexa asks.“What, aren’t you?”Clarke and Lexa are contestants on the Great British Bake Off.  With very different baking styles, they battle over bread, buns, and biscuits...and flirt like mad when they’re not on camera.  But it’s just for the duration of the competition, they both agree; no strings attached.  Right?For Day 2 of Clexaweek 2019, prompt: No Strings Attached.





	The Great British Bake Off: Season 100

**Author's Note:**

> My knowledge of British culture, geography, and vocabulary mostly comes from GBBO, Doctor Who, and Monty Python, so I apologi(s)e in advance. Unbeta'd.

_“The tent is up, the ovens are warmed, the tins are greased. A fresh crop of twelve amateur bakers has been painstakingly selected from all across Britain.  It’s time for a new series of The Great British Bake Off.”_

Lexa can hear Mel and Sue making their quippy, scripted introduction as the contestants are directed to line up behind the entirely ornamental wooden bridge, ready to cross it when the cameras turn to them. She’s glad the two hosts have been reunited with Paul and Mary; she likes their rapport.  

She still can’t believe she’s doing this.

“I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” a voice says at her elbow. She doesn’t have to look to know who it is, but does anyway. It’s a woman roughly her age, with wavy blond hair and a smile that will surely make her a favourite on camera. Clarke Griffin, assistant curator for the Tate Modern, whom Lexa suspects will be her toughest competition.

“Nervous, Griffin?” Lexa asks, keeping her voice dry.

“What, aren’t you?” Clarke retorts, before her intelligent blue eyes turn teasing. “Oh right, the _Commander_ doesn’t get nervous.”

Lexa rolls her eyes. She now regrets telling Clarke about her former nickname from her field hockey-playing days at uni. They had met at the first audition, in which Lexa had (unintentionally) terrified most of the other candidates with her fierce expression...and her somewhat frightening skill with a chef’s knife.  

Clarke alone had not been intimidated by Lexa Woods, nor by the fact that she was the youngest fellow in Oxford’s politics department.  Besides, the brunette was too fun to flirt with, and flirting took Clarke’s mind off her nerves.

“It feels like we’re about to go into battle,” she whispers conspiratorially.  “Like we should be wearing armor or something.”

“A battle against bread and biscuits? I should think an apron will suffice.”

“Fortunately you look good in an apron,” Clarke observes, smirking when Lexa’s legendary stare wavers for a moment.  “Shows off your--”

“Okay, ready everyone!” calls one of the field directors.  Moments later, they’re being ushered across the bridge and into the most famous tent in Britain.

 

***

It’s clear from the first week—Cake Week—that their baking styles differ considerably.  Lexa is a precision baker, calm, methodical, and traditional. She gives Paul a run for his money in the intense gaze department and accepts criticism and praise with an equally stoic expression.  The only exception is the shy grin that blooms when Mary declares her raspberry, orange, and white chocolate drizzle cake “absolutely scrummy”, winning the technical challenge.

Clarke is messier, more of a risk-taker, with an intuitive brilliance at baking.  She had initially auditioned for the show after a bad breakup, needing something new and positive.  She wings it a bit more than Lexa, but her creative, unusual bakes are often visually stunning.  She jokes about “soggy bottoms” with Sue and Mel and earns a rare nod and smile from Paul for her showstopper cake and its chai buttercream icing.

They don’t talk much, that first weekend.  There simply isn’t time. They’re adjusting to the hectic filming schedule and the tent and the interviews. All twelve of the contestants are exhausted when they arrive at the hotel Saturday night, and Clarke falls asleep on top of the duvet with her technique flash cards spread out around her.

Both Lexa and Clarke make it past the first round. Jasper Jordan, a lanky uni student, loses when his rum babas are so alcoholic it makes even Mary’s eyes water, but he’s a good sport about it.

The second week, it’s pastry. Clarke is soon doubting her choice of beef Wellington—she could swear it goes so much more smoothly when she makes it at home in London.

“It’s taking too long,” she mutters in frustration, crouching to peer into the oven.

“It takes as long as it takes,” Lexa remarks coolly from her neighboring station.

Forgetting about the cameras for a moment, Clarke makes a rude, two-fingered gesture at her.  In the reflective surface of the oven, she sees Lexa smirk at her in return.

Later that day, Clarke hears a clang and a hiss of sucked-in breath. She spins to see that Lexa has burned her palm trying to grab a pie tin from the oven with a too-thin towel, and she’s blowing on her hand, looking furious.  

Without thinking Clarke grabs the first aid kit she’d seen at the front of the tent and hurries back.  “Hand,” she prompts Lexa, who looks surprised but places her palm upturned in Clarke’s. The curator expertly and quickly treats and bandages the injury.  

“My mum’s a doctor,” she explains with a shrug, at Lexa’s questioning glance.

“Bakers, there’s no pie like the present. You have thirty minutes left!” Mel announces.  The two contestants hurry back to work, but not without with a last shared, lingering glance.

Nobody mentions that there’s an actual set medic who could have helped Lexa instead.

***

That night Clarke and Lexa hang out with the younger contestants at the hotel, playing cards and drinking wine alongside the pizzas they’d had delivered.  They’re all crammed into Raven’s room, Clarke in the single armchair, Lexa and Raven on the bed, and Lincoln and Octavia sitting together on the floor.

Raven is an irreverent, sarcastic aeronautical engineer who swigs wine straight from the bottle and made a really excellent roulade the first week.  Then there’s Lincoln, a steady, unflappable firefighter from Kent whose large hands crafted ridiculously delicate spun-sugar decorations for his showstopper cake, and Octavia, a police woman who won the technical that week with her amazing phyllo pastry.  The latter two have been flirting shamelessly since the first day of filming.

“Oof, that feels better,” Raven says as she removes her leg brace, stretching out her leg atop the bed.  “Right then, drinking games. Any suggestions?”

“Is that a good idea? We have an early call--” Lincoln tries to protest, but Octavia shushes him.  

“Never Have I Ever?” she offers.

“Brilliant,” says Raven, and immediately volunteers. “Never have I ever won a technical challenge.”

“Up yours,” Octavia replies cheerfully, as she and Lexa both drink.

It goes downhill from there. They discover that Lincoln and, to the surprise of all, Lexa have tattoos (“from my misspent youth”, she claims, and nobody can tell if she’s joking).  Everyone has smoked pot. Lexa, Clarke, Lincoln, and a winking Raven have all shagged girls, but Lexa’s never even kissed a bloke. It gets a bit raunchier, and Lexa’s cheeks are soon flushing from the wine or embarrassment, or both; she has migrated to sit on the floor by Clarke’s legs.

“All right you lot, get out of my room,” Raven finally announces when they run out of wine.  “I need sleep so I can kick your arses properly tomorrow.”

Octavia and Lincoln head off down the hallway together, Clarke notices, even though she’d thought Lincoln’s room was in the opposite direction.  Lexa’s room, it turns out, is next door to hers.

“Good night, Clarke,” Lexa says quietly, glancing sideways from her door.  She’d taken her braids down at some point during the game, so her dark hair is loose and a little wild.  

“Sleep well,” Clarke returns.  She focuses on her own key card--the wine had gone to her head just a bit--and enters her room.

It’s quiet, dark, and empty.  She can hear faint noises from next door: Lexa closing the door behind her, unzipping a suitcase.

She spins around and heads back out into the hallway, knocking on Lexa’s door before she even has time to think about it.

Lexa opens the door in boxers and a vest that shows her tattooed arms and...well, quite a lot of skin.  She opens her mouth in a question, but Clarke pushes forward and kisses her instead.  When the curator eventually pulls back for air, Lexa’s mouth chases her own.

“Only as long as we’re both in the competition,” Clarke says breathlessly, as Lexa tugs her shirt up.   “This isn’t a long-term thing.”

“Right,” Lexa agrees.  “No strings attached.”

“I’m not ready to date anyone.  Not yet.” Clarke brushes brown tresses from the side of Lexa’s neck and kisses her there.

Lexa sucks in a breath, smoothing her hands over Clarke’s waist.  “And I’m much too busy with my job. It wouldn’t work.”

“Exactly.”

“Terrible idea, really.”

“Shut up and kiss me, Commander.”

Lexa obliges.

***

By the third week, Clarke and Lexa are regularly sneaking off to hidden spots on the Welford Park grounds for some snogging when there’s a break from filming and slipping into each other’s hotels rooms late at night.

They both insist it’s nothing serious.  No texting each other, no talking about anything (except occasionally their shared frustration at the difficult directions in the technical challenges).

Still, it must give them an extra motivation to stay in the competition, because each week both women are among the top bakers.  Making their way through Genoese sponge, pies, Swiss rolls, biscuits, focaccia…the other contestants are good, but no match for these two.

The second through fourth weeks, neither Clarke nor Lexa are very sad to bid the losing bakers goodbye: Thelonious Jaha, a middle-aged council worker who tries to give _Lexa_ condescending advice on her pie crust and promptly makes an almost inedible steak and Stilton pie; Lorelei Tsing, a rather snooty research scientist who produces a horribly overbaked bread; and Dante Wallace, a pensioner with considerable experience baking, especially traditional dishes, but who seems a bit creepy to Clarke.

Lexa would’ve liked to see Nia Winters sent home next.  A middle-aged, sharp-eyed woman who works in banking, she acts sweet on camera but keeps herself apart from everyone else outside of filming.  She tries to sabotage one of Lexa’s technical challenges by “accidentally” taking her mousse out of the fridge.

Instead, the next to lose is Indra, a quiet, competent woman who used to be in the military and looks like she could kill someone with a bread hook.  She and Lexa had bonded during the competition, mostly over their mutual dislike of overly-prying interviews...and of Nia. After that it’s Marcus Kane, who used to work for the diplomatic service abroad somewhere; he’s nice enough and a solid baker, but a little unimaginative.

Clarke wins Star Baker thrice, Lexa twice, though the lecturer wins more technical challenges.  They go home to London and Oxford respectively after filming wraps each weekend, only to spend every second of free time practising techniques and testing recipes on their friends and family.

“What do you think? Crispy enough?”

Clarke is fretting over her palmiers.  It’s a simple enough recipe, but she can’t get the right _crunch_.  

“They’re delicious, love,” comes the muffled response, through a mouthful of pastry. Clarke’s main taste-tester (and the person she called when she won Star Baker the week before) is her dad.  

Jake is the reason she started baking in the first place.  She was in secondary school when he had to undergo chemotherapy, making his appetite all wonky.  So she’d bake treats after school to entice him, rich stuff with butter and sugar to help keep his weight up.  

Now she borrows his larger oven and tries out complex new confections while he watches football and tells her she’s brilliant.  (Her relationship with her mother, now divorced from her dad, is more...complicated.)

“Seriously Dad, I need to get these right.  Are they too buttery?”

He contemplates the pastry a little more seriously.  “Don’t think so. But the bottom is maybe a little heavy?”

Clarke snorts.  “You sound like Sue.”  She makes a note on her recipe card.

“You’ll do great, dear.  I’m sure of it.”

“Thanks, Dad.  It’s just--Lexa is so good with her pastry dough, it’s annoying…”

Jake crunches the last bit of palmier.  “Lexa. The posh one from Oxford? You’ve mentioned her before.”

“She isn’t posh.  Not exactly--” she suddenly recalls Lexa kneeling right on the dingy hotel carpet and sucking a wet, sloppy trail up Clarke’s thigh.  She blushes scarlet, and thanks heaven her dad is still too focused on the match to see. He’d definitely tease her.

***

Lexa’s coworkers at Oxford get to enjoy the fruits of her baking labours each week, and occasionally her foster sister Anya when she visits from London.  But she’s practising so intensely these days, churning out so many delicacies that they can’t eat it all up. So pretty soon the administrative staff in her department are also delighting in the home-baked treats she leaves in their common area, with neatly-penned labels listing the ingredients in case of any allergies.  

(It’s suddenly a lot easier and faster for her to get a room booked for a lecture, or copies made for an exam.)

Lexa has always enjoyed the exactitude of baking.  In her favorite foster home before Gustus adopted her, the one she was in for almost a whole year, there was a woman who braided her hair and taught her how to bake, guiding her small hands to make beef patties and Jamaican black cake and fruit pies.  She wishes she could remember the woman’s last name.

She really developed an interest in baking, though, after her girlfriend Costia died in a car accident four years ago.  And Lexa all but stopped sleeping. For weeks she stayed up baking late into the night to stave off her grief, perfected recipes and tried new ones, annotating all her cookbooks with careful additions and adjustments.

She baked nearly forty cakes that year.

Ten of them were birthday cakes for foster kids in the mentoring program she volunteers for.

Aden is one of those kids, and he’s the other person who samples her test bakes, with all the enthusiasm and bottomless appetite of a typical fifteen-year-old boy.  When they meet once a fortnight, they do things like play videogames on the Xbox Lexa only ever plays when he’s around, go see action movies, but she also shows him how to bake.  How to cook a healthy dinner. How to shop for groceries on a budget, and the other things no one consistently teaches foster kids, so that adulthood is so much harder when they reach it.

“That one’s good,” Aden tells her, pointing at the rosemary and parmesan breadstick, one of three types she’s made.  “The tomato one’s a bit too chewy.”

Lexa grits her teeth, moving her jaw in a little circle.  “I’m not good at breads,” she mutters. “Not like Clarke is, anyway.”

“Clarke’s the one you fancy, yeah?”

“I don’t _fancy_ anyone,” Lexa says with a glare that has made senior professors, department heads even, quiver in their desk chairs.  The boy simply grins.

“You talked about her last time.  And the time before that. You talked about her...tarts.”

Lexa throws a handful of flour at Aden, who ducks, still grinning.

***

It gets tougher.  The week that they’re asked to make a Pavlova for the technical challenge--Costia’s favorite, the cake Lexa used to make for _her_ birthday, which she hasn’t made since--Lexa stares at her recipe card for two full minutes, standing completely still.  Then she walks right out of the tent in her apron.  

Before the show producers, Mel, or Sue can react, Clarke follows her.  She easily finds Lexa behind a hedge away from any cameras, because it’s where they’d been snogging the previous weekend.  Lexa sits on the ground with her arms wrapped tight around her knees, shaking.

Clarke curls around her, holds her for a long minute, until her shoulders loosen just a little.

“Buck up, Woods,” Clarke tells her, gentle and teasing.  “You can’t disappoint Mary Berry now. And you _definitely_ can’t let that spiteful old hag Nia win the challenge.”  

Lexa’s laugh is a little teary, but she uncurls and kisses Clarke, unexpected and soft.  She helps the blonde up and walks with her back to the tent, so close their shoulders are brushing.

Lexa takes first in the challenge.  Clarke’s third after Raven, who takes second with her blowtorch-toasted meringue.

(“I thought we got rid of the blowtorches on set after that man caught his beard on fire last season,” Mel observes while they’re filming interviews with the winners.  “Didn’t we?”

Raven beams.  “I brought my own.”)  

***

That evening filming wraps unusually early, Lexa takes Clarke’s hand and tugs her away from the other competitors getting ready to head home.

“You’re off work for the bank holiday tomorrow, yeah? Come with me to Oxford.” Her voice is hesitant, almost plaintive, so unlike Lexa with her sure, steady hands and typically stoic demeanour.

“Just for the day?”

Lexa nods.  “No strings attached,” she says with a joking smile, but it doesn’t seem quite as genuine anymore.

They sit together in the coach that takes the contestants to the train station, but they barely interact until they’re seated on the quiet nighttime train to Oxford.  Then Clarke sinks into Lexa’s shoulder, rests her head atop it, and tells Lexa about the stress dreams she’s been having about the competition. Including the horrible one where she was asked to bake cakes shaped to look like genitalia and had to listen to Mary and Paul comment on their firmness and moisture.  

Lexa laughs so hard she almost gets tears in her eyes again.

Then they’re making their way to Lexa’s flat and it’s only awkward for a moment, right after Lexa unlocks the door and they both squeeze themselves and their overnight bags into the narrow entryway. Inside it’s silent and chilly. Clarke gets an impression of bookshelves along one wall of a spartan living room, of curtainless windows, and it reminds her how little she actually knows about this woman.

But then she walks a little farther and sees the kitchen right off the hallway. And her jaw drops.  It’s a bloody professional kitchen, all gleaming appliances and spacious countertops, large enough to comfortably fit a cooker with six gas hobs and TWO ovens.  

“THIS is where you bake?!”

Lexa pauses in taking off her jacket.  “Yes?”

Clarke enters the kitchen, staring around in shock and utter jealousy.  “You have a sodding proving drawer?!”

“The landlord was a pastry chef, before he retired and him and his husband moved out to the country.”  When Clarke turns slightly glazed eyes on her, she shrugs and admits, “The kitchen may have been the primary selling point for me.”

“I have a tiny flat with two roommates who don’t wash their dishes and an oven so small I can barely fit a whole chicken in it.” Clarke eyes the stand-mixer with unconcealed envy.  “Ugh, this is just disgusting. It’s an unfair advantage, is what it is. A betrayal.”

Lexa quirks her lips in a smile.  Indignant Clarke is cute. “Maybe I should make it up to you.”

That gets the blonde’s attention.  Her scowl quickly turns into a smirk and a raised eyebrow, and she sashays back towards Lexa.  “How do you propose to do that, exactly?”

Lexa reaches out and pulls Clarke’s hips snug with hers.  “Well, first I was thinking I could give you a tour of the bedroom…”

***

The next day is a glorious, glorious day.  A day that seems to last for a sun-filled week and simultaneously passes in a flash.  They don’t get out of bed until noon and when they do, it’s only to eat jam on toast whilst sitting on the kitchen counters, because they’re both too hungry to make anything more complicated yet.  Lexa takes Clarke to her favorite spot along the riverbank, then to the small office she shares with another fellow--where Clarke promptly sits atop her desk and Lexa just can’t help but lean in and kiss her speechless.

“You know, technically classes have ended for the semester,” she observes when they finally pull apart, clothes and hair rumpled. “I only have a research meeting late tomorrow afternoon.”

Clarke calls in sick to work the next day.

(“Only because I want time to practise making something in your gorgeous kitchen,” she claims later, when they’re back in Lexa’s bed. “I’m using you for your ovens.”  She eyes Lexa’s naked chest. “Among other things.”)

But a little itch of doubt sets in, as it does.  “What if we get caught?” Clarke asks.  They’re walking to Lexa’s favorite market, _not_ holding hands but walking so close their shadows in the morning light have merged into one.  “Won’t we get in trouble for...fraternising with the competition?”

“We aren’t dating,” Lexa points out.  Though it’s starting to feel an awful lot like it, so she hurries to add, “it’s not like I’m teaching you my secret tricks for making chocolate ganache.”

Clarke scoffs.  “As if I need your tricks, Woods.  My ganache is flawless.”

Lexa’s eyes light in challenge, like a warrior before battle.  “Is it, now?”

Later, when Lexa is eating said ganache straight out of the bowl, Clarke smirks triumphantly. “See? Flawless.”

Lexa licks some ganache off a spoon with a moan that makes the blonde’s thighs clench.  She takes the bowl and spoon out of Lexa’s hands and pushes her against the counter, chasing the chocolate hungrily with her tongue.

(“Besides,” Lexa says, later still and pantsless, “Octavia and Lincoln are definitely shagging.”)

**

It’s hard for Clarke get on the train back to London the following evening.  And it’s harder now to pretend this is still just sex (though good lord, the sex is fantastic).  She’s seen Lexa sleepy and frowning at the price of eggs and closing her eyes at the first joyous taste of coffee.

It’s just for the competition, she reminds herself.  It won’t last.

***

In the final, it comes down to Lexa, Clarke, and...Nia.  Who’s on her worst behaviour. She tries to pander to Paul and Mary, insinuates that Lexa is “too emotional” to be a truly good baker, then knocks one of Clarke’s petit fours from the cooling rack onto the floor “by accident”, before stepping on it.  

Clarke is stressed, sleep-deprived, and running low on time, she’s starting to cry and wants to _murder_ Nia.  But Lexa comes to her rescue (without murdering Nia).  

In fact, she does what Sue often does when a contestant really starts to lose their composure on camera--comes over next to Clarke and curses like a sailor, so the film is unusable.  

“Shit wanker bollocks fucking shit arsehole,” she spouts, so fluidly and conversationally that it surprises Clarke and makes her laugh.  (Lexa _never_ swears, even when a bake turns out disappointing.)  As Clarke dries her eyes on her apron, Lexa smiles at her.

“Those two are rather larger than the rest,” she notes quietly, indicating two of the tiny cakes, before heading back to her own station.

That’s all she needs to say.  Clarke understands. Cuts them each in half and uses fondant to cobble together a replacement for the lost cake.  When the time is called, she holds her breath for a long, long moment as Paul and Mary sample the petit fours.

“Oh, I quite like that,” Mary says eventually.

“You’ve got the consistency just right, the flavoring is perfect.  Well done,” Paul declares.

Clarke starts breathing again.  As she returns to her station, she sees the sour look on Nia’s haughty face...but it’s eclipsed by the bright smile in Lexa’s eyes.

***

When the contestants’ families arrive for the final and the picnic, it’s both welcome and nerve-wracking.

Welcome because Jake hugs Clarke hard and grins at her and tells her she’d better win, because he accidentally broke her cake stand.  “Sorry, love,” he says unrepentantly.

Nerve-wracking because her mum is there too, stiff and awkward at first. The last time they’d talked had ended in a fight, after Abby questioned (once again) her choice to become an art curator instead of a doctor, on top of years of similar disagreements.  But she hugs Clarke as well, hard, and whispers so the microphones can’t pick it up.

“I’m sorry, Clarke.  I should have been more supportive.”  She pulls back and wipes a few tears away, smiling a little more naturally.  “I’m glad you’re doing so well.”

“Thanks, Mum.” Clarke knuckles a few tears away herself.  “There’s someone I want you both to meet.” This time she doesn’t even think about strings and how they aren’t supposed to be attached.  She brings her parents over to where Lexa is sitting with her family.

At least, she assumes it’s her family.  There’s a bearded, tattooed middle-aged man who must be nearly two meters tall, a skinny redheaded boy who slouches in his hoodie but hangs on every word Lexa says, and a woman with sharp cheekbones and dirty-blond hair who eyes everyone suspiciously.  Lexa’s own eyes light up when Clarke comes over.

“Hey Lexa.  I wanted my mum and dad to get the chance to meet you,” she says, introduces them before she can second-guess herself.  

Lexa stands quickly to shake their hands, extra formal and clearly nervous.  But she softens a bit when she in turn introduces her adoptive father Gustus, her mentee Aden, and her foster sister Anya.

“Do you want to join us?” she asks.  “I think they’re bringing out our bakes soon.”

Jake beams and answers for all of them.  “Of course. I’m not going to turn down the chance to try your desserts.  Not after Clarke’s been talking about all your amazing techniques.”

“Dad!”

He happily ignores his daughter and sits down at the table.

“So,” Anya says to Clarke _sotto voce_ later, when everyone else is busy eating and talking, “how long have you been shagging my sister?”

Clarke nearly chokes on a bite of cake and coughs loudly.  Anya only looks amused at her potential death by accidental cake-inhalation.

“You all right, Clarke?” Lexa asks in concern from across the table.

“F--fine.  Great, actually.”

Fortunately Raven rescues her at that moment by bouncing up to their table and hugging Clarke tightly.  She’s followed by Octavia and Lincoln, who are holding hands and looking bashful, and if it weren’t for the show’s finale hanging over them, Clarke thinks it would be an almost perfect afternoon.

***

_“Welcome to Welford Park, where we’re all dressed up in our party clothes and excited as school teachers before summer holiday.  We’ve gone from twelve down to three of the absolute best amateur bakers of bread, biscuits, and banoffee pie in Britain. And we’re eagerly waiting with bated breath to find out who wins.”_

“...Finalists, if you’d like to step forward, please.”

The moments leading up to the announcement are brutal, stretched taut like the white canopy of the tent.  Clarke’s stomach twists. She reminds herself it’s just a competition, she’s been so lucky to make it this far, the real prize was in pushing herself and baking the best she possibly could.

Lexa is standing next to her, their shoulders brushing; Nia stands apart from both of them, her arms behind her back.

“The winner is…”

Clarke can hear Lexa’s shallow intake of breath in the pause, can feel Lexa’s arm warm against her own.

“...Clarke!”

She’s won.  She’s won?

She’s in such utter shock, she barely understands the words, and doesn’t completely notice when Nia pats her awkwardly on the back and her dad gives her a bear hug.

In a daze, she looks around in search of something, she’s not sure what, until her eyes find Lexa’s, green and dazzling and warm.  Clarke stumbles over to her.

“Lex,” is all she can muster.  “Lex, I won.”

“Congratulations, Clarke.  I’m so happy for you,” says Lexa, and there isn’t even an ounce of resentment or disappointment in her voice.  Just pride. And an unbridled smile that’s wider than any Clarke has ever seen on her.

Clarke’s hands numbly grasp the top of the brunette’s apron.  Then she leans in and kisses Lexa.

Right in front of everyone.

Including their parents.

On camera.

For the BBC.

Lexa is only surprised for a millisecond before she’s kissing Clark back, cupping the blonde’s face in one skilled, graceful hand.  They only stop when the wolf-whistles from Raven and Octavia get too loud to ignore.

“Well, seems like we have two winners here today,” Mel announces, and Sue, who looks completely unsurprised, makes jokes about ‘steaming up the kitchen’ and ‘lesbi-buns’, probably only half of which will actually be deemed suitable for the show.

As Lexa’s arms curl around her waist, Clarke looks into her fierce, gleaming eyes.  “I want the strings,” she declares. “All the strings. I want this to continue. I want _more_.”

“Me too,” says Lexa.  And they kiss again, in the warm sunny air filled with applause.  They kiss like it’s just the beginning.

 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, kudos and comments are appreciated! And I'm on Tumblr at sanscarte...there's a moodboard for this fic there.


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